The Centre for Ecological Sciences at IISc has a herbarium with a large collection of over 16000 species of plants from Karnataka, Western and Eastern Ghats and other parts of peninsular India. Over the past twelve years, Prof. Sankara Rao, a retired professor from the Biochemistry department of IISc and an expert botanist, and his small team of volunteers, have been digitizing the entire collection and produced a Digital Flora of Karnataka that is freely available online (http://florakarnataka.ces.iisc.ac.in). This open-source platform provides invaluable information to scientists and non-scientists on the flora of Karnataka.

Prof. Sankara Rao has now completed digitizing the flora of Eastern Ghats and some parts of Peninsular India. The 'Digital Flora of Peninsular India (http://flora-peninsula-indica.ces.iisc.ac.in)' and the ‘Digital Flora of Eastern Ghats (http://floraeasternghats.ces.iisc.ac.in)’ were formally launched on Saturday 2nd March 2019 at 11 a.m. in the Faculty Hall, Main Building, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

The video of the launch programme is available at http://mmcr1.iisc.ac.in/iisc/video.html?videoId=1802

Some photos of the event are available at http://ces.iisc.ac.in/FloraLaunchPhotos/